


Leave Tonight or Live and Die This Way

by Cant_We_Just_Dance



Series: Laflams Alex is ignored [6]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bad poly, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Kinda allusions to noncon but barely, Laflams, Lams - Freeform, Laurette - Freeform, M/M, Multi, controlling boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 09:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13291608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cant_We_Just_Dance/pseuds/Cant_We_Just_Dance
Summary: We’ve gotta make a decision, he whispered. The keys wore so tightly into his grip that he was almost afraid his hand would bleed.Leave tonight or live and die this way.





	Leave Tonight or Live and Die This Way

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by 'Fast Car' by Tracy Chapman

Be someone.

That was all Alexander had ever wanted of his life. He wanted to be someone, the kind of person a younger version of himself would be proud to look up to. He wanted to rise up and have a place where he belonged, a place where the sheets wrapped around his legs in the morning instead of scratching him. Where his breaths could remain steady whether it was a calm-skied night or one swirled with storm clouds, and the strum of streams stringing his windows no longer sent shivers down his spine. In a home that was more of a shack, he didn’t belong. Not even a real family was what he had; so belonging wasn’t his priority. 

Stepping off the boat from Nevis, he could still feel the rocking of the ship beneath his feet, no matter how far he walked from the docks. His long hair (too long, had been told to cut it at customs) fluttered around his face, almost in his eyes, almost obstructing his vision. It was a good thing that he knew his way around a notebook so well that he hardly needed to look down in order to know where his words lined up. Nothing made him need to look up, anyways. Not the shakiness of the city around him, or the people who walked past him and whispered words that were far less than kind.

Alexander was more than used to those words, anyways. He was well accustomed to the way people would spit words at him that weren’t even true. It was not a rarity for someone to nudge him a bit too hard to have been an accident, but he didn’t say anything back. He knew that saying something wouldn’t end well for him. It never ended well. It wouldn’t end well here in New York City, and it hadn’t worked in Nevis. He could still feel his throat burn from the way he’d screamed for his mother those nights when law enforcement men had pulled her out of their home and bruised her, only for her to come back the next day with swollen lips and her braids undone.

My Alexander, she had told him those mornings, carefully braiding his locks out of his eyes which were all too tearstained for a child of his age. Do not speak of what happens when I am taken from our home. We will be okay. If we stay quiet, and we do not say anything about what they do, then we will not be hurt.

But Mama, they don’t hurt us. They only hurt you.

I know, my Alexander. And that is why staying silent is so important. Silence brings safety to the most precious thing in my life.

So Alexander had stayed quiet. It wasn’t what the men had done to his mother, what the woman had taken such pain to keep him from knowing, even though common sense had always been string with her son. Silence was good, though. Silence kept people from hurting him.

Though, Alexander noted as he heard a loud cracking after someone called him a name in too loud a tone, actions truly did speak louder than words. In that moment, he’d looked up to see a dark-skinned man with hair that coiled in on itself into infinite curls standing over the man that had been taunting Alexander. With a shy smile, the man stepped off of the offender and introduced himself.

Lafayette.

He was sorry for his way of taking care of the other man, but it hurt him to hear such things being said to someone that did not fight back. He spoke with a French accent, thick like sweet cream, and as he extended a hand to Alexander, the shorter man took it and held it tight, allowing Lafayette to lead him to a different part of the park, one less populated than others.

It was a small clearing in the middle of a tree-filled area, with leaves crunching beneath their feet and the wet grass soaking through Alexander’s ratty sneakers. They would meet there every couple of days, for reasons that they both knew were less than normal. They weren’t even at the same university, or in similar courses, but they met up to study together anyways. Some days would be spent in silence, soaking up the late spring sunlight as they read together. Other times, Lafayette would regale Alexander with tales of his home back in Paris, or the antics of his boyfriend, John Laurens. 

John entered the picture in more than pictures in August.

He simply smiled along when Lafayette quietly asked Alexander out for a date, a proper one that was more than hanging out as friends. Alexander had leaned forward and asked how John felt about all of it, but the freckled man simply dismissed any sort of notion that it was less than normal.

If Lafayette wants to be with you, I won’t stop him. He and I are still together, but that shouldn’t restrict who he happens to have feelings for.

Alexander ignored the way Lafayette held his arm across John’s shoulder, holding him close despite the stifling August heat. Or maybe he didn’t notice. Being with Lafayette made things seem like less than they should have been. Nevertheless, he accepted.

Dates with Lafayette were quiet, calm, and somehow left the taste of chocolate cake in his mouth. They would kiss at the end of dates, when Lafayette dropped Alexander off at his apartment, or vice versa. When Alexander dropped Lafayette off, though, it was strange. Lafayette would invite him in for a moment or two, and they’d usually be met with the sight of John at his desk or on the couch. Somehow, the three of them wouldn’t melt together when they loved on each other. Lafayette was always the center of it, holding everything together that prevented Alexander’s fire from challenging John’s flame. 

Warmth was enough, though. Right? Sure, the fire in his eyes had been reduced to the warmth from a blanket on a winter night, but that was good. It wouldn’t burn anyone. Lafayette assured him of that.

It only took a few more months before Alexander moved in with the two of them. 

And somehow, in the weeks that followed, Alexander had stopped seeing things from the outside perspective he’d held onto so tightly, hands gripped around the side of his rose-tinted glasses.

John would be the one to wake early and make breakfast, some mornings alongside Alexander, while Lafayette laid in bed with his limbs spread almost entirely across the mattress. John had no need to take too long in the shower, whereas Lafayette soaked up all the hot water, leaving Alexander with only ice to wrap round himself. Their dates included John now, and somehow, when the three of them were together, Lafayette took up the whole room. His charm would twist the words that left the mouths of the other men, sending them down into sharp somethings that they had no desire to inspect fully.

Lafayette drove Alexander everywhere. The shorter man had tried to insist that he was okay taking the train, but Lafayette’s words pulled around his mind like tight ropes that wound around his lungs, keeping him from catching his breath in those conversations. He didn’t need the train, and it was out of the way for Lafayette, sure, but that didn’t matter. Alexander would only need Lafayette to get to class, not the train system. You can never depend on New York City trains, Lafayette pointed out. It’s safer to spend more time in the car. 

One night, somewhere in January where Alexander couldn’t make his way around the apartment without a blanket across his shoulders, he asked John where all the medical textbooks had gone. Where they had laid strewn across the coffee table, large volumes taking up most the bookshelves, they were now nowhere to be seen. Not under the bed, or holding up the one wobbly stool in the kitchen, or in John’s messenger bag that hung on the hook next to the front door to their apartment.

I quit school, were the words that John whispered, twisting a small test tube between his fingers.

I thought you loved it, though? Weren’t you doing well?

We decided that it would be best if I didn’t finish my degree.

Alexander didn’t need to ask who ‘we’ meant. After all, it was only Lafayette who had decided that. Not John.

His fire had wormed its way out of his heart and into the fireplace, to be reduced to ashes when Lafayette got home. He hated having anything burn in the fireplace.

So Alexander sat down on the floor next to John, holding his hand tightly, so unlike how he’d treated the other man. He didn’t love John, not really. But there were sparks of something that could have been hate, or friendship, or somethings. Little bits of somethings were enough for Alexander, anyways.

We’ve gotta make a decision, he whispered. The keys wore so tightly into his grip that he was almost afraid his hand would bleed.

Leave tonight or live and die this way.


End file.
